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Nathaniel was nine years old, and for this one fleeting moment, he was alone.
It was winter, and the wind was bitter enough to steal Nathaniel’s breath. He huddled further into his coat, hands crammed into the pockets, tucking his chin into the scarf wound tight around his neck. The snow at his feet was gray with dirt—a gray that matched the sky above his head. He could feel the dampness beginning to seep into his shoes.
The only time Nathaniel was ever away from the scrutiny of his parents was moments like these, in the early morning before anyone had thought to wonder where he was. On Saturdays, if no urgent business had come up, Nathan Wesninski would take his time emerging from the bedroom; sometimes he wouldn’t have reason to come looking for his son until mid-morning. So with no eyes on him, Nathaniel snuck out and stood in the center of the quiet suburban Baltimore street, letting the old snow chill his feet.
There was something about this time of day, and the sensation of being alone, that made him feel untouchable. His mother’s intense stare, his father’s hostile words and rough hands and the violence he embodied, all were closed away in the silent house behind him. A siren echoed from several blocks away. Nearer by, a dog barked, and Nathaniel braced himself to return inside if its owner walked past and approached him, but the sound faded away in the opposite direction.
His feet itched to move.
He startled as suddenly, the door to the house was wrenched open. “Nathaniel?” his father’s voice said, and then as he caught sight of the boy, he repeated the word louder and more angrily. “Nathaniel! What the fuck are you doing out here? You get back inside, or I swear to God, I’ll—“
Nathaniel stood, and shut his eyes, and waited for the sharp wrench of his father’s hand on his elbow, dragging him inside.
---
Ten Years Later
Andrew Minyard hated winter, for a number of reasons.
The first was the cold. Andrew’s body temperature ran low enough that in the winter months, it was nearly impossible to get the chill in his bones to fade. The coziness other people gained from thick blankets and hot showers did not fully chase it away; even with a roaring fire in front of him, he could not ignore the cold at his back.
The second reason was how tired it made him. The cold was supposed to be invigorating, but it had the opposite effect on Andrew. Every bite of icy air drained a little more of his energy, until he began to physically yearn to be in bed. Naps did little to curb his exhaustion, but he took them anyway. It was too tempting to give into the profound inertia that winter seemed to demand of him. He would emerge an hour or two or three later, groggy and slow and no less tired for his sleep. Neil—stupid as he was, smart as he was—soon learned to talk to Andrew without words in these moments, before making any attempt at speech: a quickly consented-to hand in Andrew’s hair or fingers tracing the curve of his neck grounded him and drew him out of his stupor faster than anything requiring focus or mental processing.
The third reason was the pain.
Andrew kept secrets like other people kept possessions, like Neil had kept his binder of runaway resources when he’d first arrived: tied tight in bundles, close to his chest, only to be pried from him involuntarily. (Unless, of course, it was Neil asking. Andrew still sometimes felt the curl of almost-hate in his chest for Neil’s ability to get him to give up his secrets willingly.) He’d kept Kevin’s secrets, and Neil’s, and Aaron’s. But the ones about himself were tucked deep in the smallest crevices, so far away they couldn’t really be seen (even by himself, unless he had reason to look).
This particular secret started with his arm. He felt it well before the actual pain, right as the weather began to change from autumn’s calm coolness to the bitter sting of winter: something like static pulling at the back of his mind, weaving its claws into his dormant memories. Little by little, as December’s exhausted fragility bore him down into uncomfortable coldness, he felt the first tendrils of pain in his right arm. A stiffness mostly, at first, like a cramped muscle that wouldn’t unknot; then an ache that he couldn’t get rid of, no matter how many ibuprofen he took or how thoroughly he stretched out at practice. Eventually it spread to his leg, too, until his entire right side protested movement and radiated soreness in a way nearly impossible to ignore.
It wasn’t that the pain itself was so bad. Unpleasant, yes, but Andrew had suffered infinitely worse unpleasantness over the years and was frequently sore from his Exy games anyway. It was the way he felt this particular ache bone-deep—the way it took something he’d sheathed safely behind a protective covering and splintered it, fractured his tight hold over emotions and memories long buried. Because he remembered what it had felt like to break apart like that: the swooping fall, the sickening crack of bone as an arm and a leg bent in ways they weren’t flexible enough to withstand. And he remembered everything that had happened next, that had taken Andrew and torn him to pieces in more ways than he knew.
He remembered, and in the winters, his body would not let him forget.
---
Bee had warned him that it might be worse this year. In a therapy session, she’d gently reminded Andrew that his body had new memories of trauma to weather, and this might make his winter pain more difficult to bear. Andrew greeted this idea with the same impassive expression he always wore, although mentally he was already beginning to shore up his defenses against whatever the season had in store for him. But November was warmer than usual, with no hard frost and no early snow, and despite its negative associations, Thanksgiving passed by without incident.
Classes let out for the semester on December 15, and Neil and Andrew retreated to Columbia to spend their winter break alone at the house. The last week of classes brought with it a gusting, bitter wind; as they packed up the car for a few weeks away, the air was heavy with cold, a sharp and mobile thing that held the promise not of snow, but of a lasting freeze. Neil shivered in his coat and jacked up the heat in the car for the drive. Andrew sat in the passenger seat, wishing for the warmth of a cigarette between his fingers, but unwilling to roll down the window to let the smoke out if it meant inviting the cold in.
The two of them went to sleep almost as soon as they got to Columbia, Andrew already feeling the gravitational pull of his body toward the bed as the exhaustion of cold settled into his marrow. When Andrew awoke, it was early enough that the room was cast only in weak morning light. He noticed two things at the same time: the first was that his arm was tingling with phantom pain, his joints throbbing when he tried to move them.
The second was that Neil was not in bed with him.
This, if nothing else, was sufficient incentive to get up. He rotated his arm to try and get the tension out of his muscles, even though he knew it was futile at this point; after swallowing 2 pain relievers—also futile, but satisfying in its own way—he crept downstairs in the early-morning quiet to see what had drawn Neil from bed. Neil’s coat was missing from the rack in the front hallway, which suggested the idiot had gone for a frigid early-morning run. Andrew was about to roll his eyes at that, when he noticed a figure out the window in his peripheral vision, and shrugging on his own coat, slipped out the door after him.
The street was silent, and dark except for the pale beginnings of sunlight and the houses glimmering with Christmas decorations. Neil was a faint shadow standing in the road, a few inches away from the curb. His coat had been pulled on over his pajamas, and though he was bundled up, he should be shivering against the cold—but even from here Andrew could see he stood motionless, his focus caught on something other than the frigid air. Andrew could not see his face from this angle, but he did not think he would like what was written on it.
Carefully he moved closer, but there were still a few feet of distance between them when Neil’s quiet murmur stopped him in his tracks. “No.” He froze, and waited for Neil’s reaction—for him to clarify, or panic, or whatever he would do next. After a moment, Neil said, “Don’t touch me from behind. And not on my elbow.”
Slowly, not wanting to make any sudden movements or trigger him into flight, Andrew came around in front of Neil. He positioned himself there, between Neil and whatever was haunting him now, and raised a hand toward the other man’s face where he could clearly see it. “Yes or no?” It was barely more than a whisper.
Neil nodded yes, and Andrew’s chilly, bare fingers traced a feather-light path down the raised line of a scar on his cheek. Neil blinked at the intimacy, some of the far-away look leaving his eyes, and though Andrew’s expression remained neutral, a small part of him thrilled at Neil’s willingness to respond to his touch. “You’re in Columbia,” Andrew reminded him, his breath coming out in white puffs. “We’re here for winter break. It’s early. There’s nothing for you out here in the street. Come back inside.”
Neil nodded again, and turned to follow Andrew inside. The warm air of the house enveloped them when they came in, and while Neil methodically removed his coat and scarf, Andrew set the coffee brewing in the kitchen. He handed Neil a cup when it was ready, and watched him map an aimless pattern with his finger on the side of his mug, bottom lip caught between his teeth.
“Were you at Evermore?” Andrew asked, finally. There was no need for their truth-for-a-truth bargain anymore. Whatever they needed to know, the other would tell. Andrew didn’t know when this line had stopped being uncrossable, but they had let each other into their heads now, and Andrew wanted to know what memory had pulled Neil so far away.
Neil shook his head. “Baltimore,” he murmured; seeing Andrew’s eye twitch in response, he added, “Not the last time. When I was a kid.”
Andrew studied him. “Why?”
“I used to like going outside by myself,” Neil replied. “It was the only time I really got to be alone. Winter reminds me of that.” He looked up at Andrew, and asked, “Yes or no?” When Andrew breathed yes, Neil reached out and pressed two of his fingers, hot from the mug, to Andrew’s lower lip. Andrew felt the warmth of them flood the sensitive skin.
“Do you want to be alone now?” Andrew asked carefully when Neil had removed his fingers.
Neil looked up at him, and he sounded steadier and more certain when he said, “I want to be here with you.” Something in Andrew tugged at the affirmation, like Neil held a string connected to something deep inside him that Andrew thought he’d cut all ties to. Neil’s gaze was unwavering and earnest on his face. “What do you want?”
Neil had been asking him this question more and more, and Andrew hated it every time. For the longest time, it had been customary for Andrew not to want anything at all. But as the “yes or no” exchanges and the truth game became less vital to their relationship, this question had begun to take its place. Andrew bit his lip and scowled. The corner of Neil’s mouth tugged up in a semblance of a smile. He waited. “Sleep,” Andrew finally said.
Neil lifted his mug, eyebrows raised in a silent question: can I finish this first? Andrew hummed his assent, and they waited while Neil quietly drank his coffee. He found himself clenching his fingers reflexively at his side, trying in vain to work the tension out of his right hand. Neil frowned at it. “Your hand OK?”
Andrew stared at him, stony and silent, an impassive force. He didn’t know if he could speak this secret aloud just yet.
Neil put down his coffee mug after draining the last few drops. “Let’s go back to bed.”
They took up their normal positions—Andrew in first, back to the wall, Neil next to him on his right—but Neil stayed propped half-sitting once Andrew had gotten settled in bed. He laid his hand on the pillow next to Andrew’s right arm. “Yes,” he said, extending one finger slightly towards Andrew’s hand, “or no?” His expression was calm and open, but there was a furrow at the edge of his brow that suggested resignation. Neil was already expecting the answer to be no.
Had he been pressed to guess, Andrew would have admitted the same expectation. But when he braced himself for the rush of stop, don’t touch, don’t touch where it hurts the most…nothing came other than a small flutter of nerves. He frowned, puzzled. “Yes.”
Neil’s fingers were gentle points of contact. They soothed over the planes of his palm and the ridges of his knuckles, the pads of his fingers where calluses from the Exy racquet dotted the skin. Then Neil began to press down ever so slightly harder, and Andrew realized with a start that Neil was massaging his hand, rubbing light pressure into the joints to ease the soreness away. Neil heard his breath catch. “Okay?” he asked.
He didn’t need an answer. Andrew’s even expression was enough. This was okay.
Andrew let his eyes shut. Eventually Neil’s hands disappeared, and he felt the bed shift as the other man got up. He paid it no mind until he heard the sound of something being plugged in to the outlet next to the bed. Neil had pulled something out of the hall closet and was unraveling it onto the bed now.
Andrew blinked. It was a heating pad.
Neil held it out to him. “Do you want this, yes or no?” he asked. Andrew took it, and knowing that he was giving up another part of the secret, laid it across his forearm, sighing imperceptibly as Neil clicked it onto its lowest setting and mild warmth began to seep into the heating pad. His arms were still, more often than not, off limits—something he was willing to let Neil see more often than he allowed him to touch. But Neil had persisted, in his stupid, annoying way, and found a route around the barriers Andrew knew he had to keep up.
Were he a different man, Andrew would have smiled. Instead, he curled deeper into the covers, and as he fell back asleep, he let the tiny burst of affection nestle its way into his core, finding a space for itself where before there had only been empty corners.
---
Hours later, Neil stood bundled up at the end of the sidewalk, a thin tendril of smoke from his cigarette curling into the freezing air. The block was quiet, just as it had been that morning: this time, it was the dusky light of evening that suffused the air. Neil stared out into the empty street, cataloguing the faraway sounds of sirens and car radios and the faint bark of a dog.
He turned around, and looked back at Andrew on the porch.
Neil smiled, and let the ghost of his father begin to fade away into the winter air.